


Peach: Step One for Moving Forward.

by NightFeather



Series: Steps for Moving Forward [1]
Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 05:39:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4907503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightFeather/pseuds/NightFeather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Well hey, Peach,”</p>
<p>Lydia-centric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peach: Step One for Moving Forward.

Lizzie, Jane, and Lydia had just finished moving the last load of boxes into Lydia’s new apartment in San Francisco. She had just finished school that May and now, mid-July, she was moving into her new apartment just outside of the city. She had a fancy paid internship lined up for the year at Pemberley Digital thanks to none other than William Darcy and the encouragement of her sister, and she was happy to have a fresh start ahead of her.

Lydia followed her sisters down the stairs of the apartment building and to Lizzie’s car, where the three girls piled in and made their way to the nearest coffee shop to get something cool to drink and something to feed their growling stomachs. Just because she had a fancy schmancy job ahead of her didn’t mean Lydia was willing to throw all of her money at a glorious apartment. She didn’t even want to pay for a window unit air conditioner. That said, moving load after load of boxes up three flights of stairs in the summer heat left she and her sister’s fairly tired and hungry at the end of the afternoon.

The three made their way into the coffee shop located on a corner not three blocks away from Lydia’s apartment. Lizzie had insisted that they drive as she was exhausted, and Jane’s arguments towards getting some fresh air were not enough to beat her down. Lydia was too tired to argue either way so she happily settled for a quick car ride as long as it meant getting to eat in the next twenty minutes.

Lydia stood in line as her sisters found a table in the corner. Jane joined her after a minute, as Lizzie texted who Lydia could only assume was Darcy back at the table. They studied the menu and Lydia contemplated whether to get something hot or cold to drink when the person in front of them finished ordering. They stepped up, both of their eyes still trained on the menu.

“Well hey, Peach,”

Suddenly Lydia wasn’t so hungry anymore. Her eyes tore away from the menu board to focus on the scruffy face that stood in front of her in a stupid Kelly green apron. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in a few days and his hair still held the familiar swoop to one side. His eyes were the same crystal blue that she remembered staring into so many times before and his jaw clenched as the corner of his mouth quirked up.

“George-,”

She felt Jane’s hand fly up to her arm, “Lydia-,”She started

He cut Jane off, “Now what are you doing up here in San Francisco? Did my Peach finally finish school?” He asked, his smirk growing. Lydia swallowed.

“Lydia,” Jane started again, forming a grip on her arm.

“I thought you ditched the sisters a long time ago, Lyd? They did the same to you last time I heard. Don’t you remember any of that?” George asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Lydia did remember, all too well.

Jane started to pull her to the side but she pulled her arm out of her grasp.

“Excuse me,” She croaked, her voice raspy, lacking knowledge of what to say but full of anger that she didn’t know if she could contain.

She tightened her grip on her purse and started to push her way through the crowd of people lined up behind her and Jane. She heard a chair screech on the floor backing out from a table and her name being called behind her; she assumed it was Lizzie but she couldn’t be bothered at the moment. Swiftly she pushed past the last couple of people and made her way out the door and down the block toward her apartment. Three blocks wasn’t that far if you were trying to run away from the ghost of a person you once knew.

 

***

 

Fifteen minutes later Lydia was curled up on her bed, a throw blanket she’d dug out of a box wrapped tightly behind her. Her front door was locked and her bedroom door was shut. The building was old, but the pleasure of a locking bedroom door was still one she did not have.

She could hear knocking; she knew it was her sisters. She could hear their voices calling her name, yelling for her to let them in so that they could help. She ignored them.

After a few minutes there was silence; Lydia didn’t even realize it until her mind stopped repeating the word _peach_ over and over for a flash of a second and she realized that she couldn’t hear her actual name being called.

She sat there, curled up into a ball, still as could be. The silence reigned for only a minute before she heard her door squeaking open, scraping against the doorframe. She squeezed her eyes shut upon the realization that she had handed over a spare key to Lizzie literally an hour earlier. She was beyond the point of caring though- no; she was just too tired to even get to that point. She heard the key drop on the coffee table and bags being dropped on the living room floor.

“Lydia?” She could hear Jane calling through the bathroom door.

“Jane-,” She heard Lizzie’s hushed voice. She assumed Lizzie had realized that she was in her bedroom. There was some mumbling, hushed whispers she assumed, before a soft knock came on her bedroom door.

“Lydia?” Lizzie’s voice came quietly, “Can we come in?”

She didn’t respond. She gripped the blanket tighter and squeezed her eyes shut harder and wished it would all go away, that she could erase the last three hours and do it over again without ever even considering the idea of going to that one damn coffee shop.

“Lydia? We’re coming in,” Jane’s calm voice echoed through the door.

She heard the doorknob turn and the door squeak open. There were footsteps, then the mattress sank, and then one sister was curled up alongside her while the other sat on the other side stroking her hair.

“We’re here, Lydia, we’re here,”

 

***

 

Lydia didn’t leave her apartment for three days. Jane and Lizzie alternated taking off of work, one coming one day and the other the next. Lydia felt small, and defeated, beaten down by the fact that one small interaction after not even a year could put her out of commission so fast.

“Lyddie?” Jane’s calm voice came from outside the door, Lydia rolled over from where she was staring at her phone, the YouTube app up showcasing her channel that hadn’t been touched in nearly five months. She quickly locked her phone and sat up.

“Yeah?” She responded, quietly, setting her phone on the bed next to her and combing her hand through her messy hair.

“I have lunch for you,” Jane said.

Lydia took a deep breath, “You can come in,” She said.

The door opened slowly and there was Jane, prim and proper as always, holding a plate that looked like it held grilled cheese with apple slices inside- one of Lydia’s childhood favorites.

Lydia closed her eyes and inhaled and for a moment, she felt better; for a moment she wasn’t there anymore, she was ten years old again and her mom was making lunch for her and her sisters on a Friday off from school. She had no worries or cares that extended further than a simple math worksheet to finish for Monday or finding out whether or not Stella Hanson was going to invite her to her big 10th birthday bash. But then she opened her eyes and it was gone; she was back in reality, and all of this, this- shit, was still happening.

“Hey,” Jane said, smiling softly at her younger sister.

Lydia forced a smile and took the plate that Jane offered her, setting it on the bedside table from Ikea that Lizzie had built with the utmost determination a few days before.

Jane sat down next to her, resting her hands in her lap, looking like she had something to say but didn’t know quite how to start.

Lydia, for the first time in days, decided that she was hungry. Or, maybe she wasn’t. Regardless, she grabbed half of the grilled cheese off of the plate and took a bite; it was something to do to pass the time in the awkward silence after all.

“Lydia-,” Jane started and then stopped. She lifted her arm and placed it on Lydia’s upper back, turning toward her.

“I know you’re beyond tired of hearing us ask you if you’re okay, I’m sure it’s a question you never want to hear again, but I just want to know if you’re telling the truth, Lydia. It’s not that I don’t believe you, I just- I want to make sure that you’re okay, that you’re not just scraping by,” Jane said softly.

Lydia swallowed and put the sandwich back on her plate. She’d only taken a few bites, but suddenly she wasn’t so hungry anymore.

“I’m not sure how to answer your question,” Lydia said meekly, the confusion evident in her voice, “I mean, I’m not lying to you, if that’s what you’re asking?” She said, looking at her sister.

Jane’s face settled in a slight sense of relief as her sister continued.

“I mean, I’m not okay, Jane, I think that’s kind of obvious, but I’m not happy with that. I’m not happy that even after months of moving on I can still be pushed to the ground with a few simple sentences. I hate that he reduces me to this even when I don’t want him to. I hate that even though I’ve tried to clear everything resembling him, everything that has a smidgen of George Wickham attached to it out of my life, I still can’t seem to forget about it,” Lydia was quiet a moment. She clenched her teeth, her telltale way of trying to not let herself cry. Her face flushed, her fists clenched, her mouth hurt from gritting her teeth together so hard.

Lizzie had quietly stepped inside the room as the conversation had come to a lull and had taken residence on the floor facing her sisters.

Suddenly, breaking the stale silence the three were sitting in, Lydia burst. She let out a half-sob, half-laugh. It was spiteful, and she finally let a few tears fall down her face.

“And my god, that damn nickname! I can’t believe it still gets to me! Peach. One stupid fruit, one stupid name, one _stupid_ guy,” She breathed and mopped at her face with the hand that hadn’t been grasped tightly by Jane.

Lizzie moved closer to her sisters, getting off the floor and curling up into her Lydia’s other side next to her on the bed.

“Lydia-,” Lizzie started but she cut her off,

“No! You two don’t understand. It sucks, you know? It really sucks. Because as much as you two and everyone else want me to be okay and want to make sure that I’m okay, I want to be okay ten times more. I don’t want my life to be controlled like the flip of a switch by this asshole of a guy. I don’t want him to be a part of my life anymore, but he is. Because I’m not okay, I’m just not yet. I don’t know when I will be, but I know I’m not there yet. I’m not his anymore, I’m not anyone’s, I know that, but every time I see something that resembles him I get thrown back into the hurricane that is George Wickham-,” She stopped because she was out of breath and the sharp intake of air that followed sounded more like a repressed sob than an actual inhale.

Lizzie pulled her sister into a hug while Jane gripped her hand harder. Lydia buried her face in her sister’s shoulder, and it all too well resembled a moment the two had experienced only a few short months earlier.

“Lydia?” Lizzie said quietly a few minutes later, daring to go there, daring to tread on dangerous territory.

Lydia didn’t lift her head from where it was tucked into her sister’s shoulder.

“Whhht,” Her reply came out muffled.

“Lydia, sit up,” Lizzie coaxed her sister out of the position, a quite uncomfortable-looking one, that she’d been in for the past five minutes.

Lydia wiped at her face again; it was ruddy and flushed.

“What, Lizzie,” Lydia said again.

“I know you feel terrible right now, but you said it twice, and that’s something you should be proud of,”

Jane smiled, knowingly.

“What are you talking about Lizzie? Has the heat gotten to your head?” Lydia said, trying to be back to her perky self, feeling her sister’s forehead. Lizzie smiled and grabbed her sister’s hand from her forehead, gripping it in her own. Jane did the same with her other hand and Lydia turned to her oldest sister.

“You’ve said it twice, Lydia, his name, the full George Wickham. That’s something you haven’t been able to do in months, and you didn’t even think about it,”

“No,” Lydia said quietly, looking back and forth between her sisters, “No, that doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a stupid name, I was just angry, of course it came out-,”

“Lydia, stop doubting yourself. You said it, in anger or not, you said it. You’re over a hurdle you’ve been itching to jump over for months,”

“But it’s just his name, that doesn’t mean he’s out of my head!” Lydia said, frustrated.

“Lyddie, he’s on his way out. This is one step toward being okay again. He’s always going to be there, whether or not he’s in your life. He’s always going to be a chapter in your book, whether or not it’s one you’d rather rip out and crumple up. But you’re moving on. You saw him again and you’re living to tell about it. He’s not getting to you like you think he is, and that, Lydia, that’s a tiny success, and that’s all we care about,”

Lydia sighed. She didn’t know what to say. She understood her sisters, but it was still hard to wrap her mind around the fact that George Wickham was on his way out of her life for good, that she was moving forward, that she was making progress.

It’s incredibly hard to realize that you’re no longer the person you’ve been for so long. Lydia didn’t realize for so many months that she was moving on from being his, and moving toward being her own. She didn’t belong to him anymore; she wasn’t his love, his fling, his peach. She wasn’t anyone’s but her own, and that was something almost entirely new and foreign to her. She hadn’t been free for years, and for once, she was finally realizing that she enjoyed it.

“Just promise me one thing,” Lydia said quietly, and her sisters both nodded,

“Anything,” Lizzie said.

“No more buying fuzzy produce, no matter how sweet they taste,” Lydia smiled. Her sisters laughed and squeezed her hands and pulled her in for hugs.

She was going to be okay, eventually. But for now, she would settle for no longer being anyone’s peach.

**Author's Note:**

> I am only nine chapters into listening to The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet and I'm already delving back into Lydia-centric fics that I started months ago. I feel incredibly close to Lydia right now, and I hope she knows that we're all proud of her.


End file.
